AMEC wins EPC contract for Dominion’s three new Indiana solar power plants

JinkoSolar will supply modules for the three new Indiana solar plants. Image: JinkoSolar.

International consultancy, engineering and project managing firm AMEC has been appointed as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm to deliver three solar power projects in Marion County, Indiana, USA. The EPC contract was awarded by Dominion Resources, the Virginia-based, utility company ranked 210th in the 2013 Fortune 500 list.

Dominion announced last week that it had bought the projects, which had already begun construction, from Sunrise Energy Ventures. Financial terms of the deals have not been disclosed.

AMEC has already begun EPC work with commercial production expected to begin at the end of this year. Under a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), electricity generated by the three solar power stations will be purchased by electricity provider Indianapolis Power and Light for 15 years. Around 470,000 customers including residential and businesses, will be served by the new installations.

When completed, the additional 28.6MW in capacity would increase the state of Indiana’s solar energy generation capacity fivefold, from the 7MW currently installed. According to a statement by AMEC, the three sites, named Indy Solar I, Indy Solar II and Indy Solar III, will utilise a fixed-tilt system and standard photovoltaic cells, fitted with JinkoSolar modules, Array Technologies’ racking and SMA inverters. JinkoSolar will supply a total of 39MW in modules to the three projects in the form of 300W 72 cell, high-efficiency PV modules.

The three plants are all situated on flat agricultural or forest land suitable for solar energy installation, spanning 76 hectares of land. Two of the sites, Indy Solar I and Indy Solar II will be located on a 63ha site southeast of Indianapolis, while the third site, Indy Solar III will be built on a 54ha site to the southwest of Indianapolis.

Now that the PV industry has unquestionably entered a new growth phase, all eyes are on which technologies will win through into the mainstream of PV manufacturing. PERC, n-type, p-type bifacial, heterojunction – all have become familiar terms in the ever-growing constellation of solar cell technologies. The question is which will offer manufacturers what they are looking for in improving efficiencies and cutting costs.

Although the past few years have proved extremely testing for PV equipment manufacturers, falling module prices have driven solar end-market demand to previously unseen levels. That demand is now starting to be felt by manufacturers, to the extent that leading companies are starting to talk about serious capacity expansions later this year and into 2015. This means that the next 12 months will be a critical period if companies throughout the supply chain are to take full advantage of the PV industry’s next growth phase.